Stephen Baxter - Iron Winter

There were cities on the coast here, substantial ports that now brooded within the remains of walls. The travellers avoided these places. Instead they stayed a few nights in smaller villages, where the local people survived by fishing. They were welcomed, if warily; few travellers came this way any more, it seemed. Pyxeas said this was the pattern of the future in the coming longwinter, ‘when no man will venture more than a day or two’s travel beyond his home village, the rest of the world forgotten’.

In such places Avatak stared hungrily at the ocean. Somewhere beyond, far to the west, lay his own home. Though there was no sea ice, on clear days he saw splinters of white on the grey, surging water. Icebergs, drifting from the north.

On the travellers passed, moving inland. It was clear the country had changed greatly. This land had recently been forested, with tremendously tall and old oak trees. Now the remaining trunks stood barren. Though the spring was advancing they rarely saw a splash of green, a new leaf or a fresh shoot. And in places there was evidence of tremendous fires, whole landscapes reduced to ash and blackened stumps.

Pyxeas said the culprit was the climate, once again. ‘This is how forests die. Avatak, remember how we smelled the northern forests burning, all the way across Asia? And remember what we saw in Daidu? When you burn a tree it is like opening a tremendous bottle of fixed air, all at once! Imagine how much has been released in these vast conflagrations. .’

They saw few people — fewer, if anything, than in Ibera — and those they did spot, always on the move, stayed well away from what must have looked like a well-armed party. They passed through clearings in the forest, cut into the woodland and connected by broad tracks, a little like Northland’s communities. These settlements were abandoned, ransacked, burned out. In one place they found a gallows set up over the central hearth, with the remains of a human body suspended upside down over the ash. Nelo sketched the gruesome scene, and he cut down the corpse with a swipe of a sword, and buried the remains in the hearth.

Further north the country changed again, becoming more open. The air was much wetter now, colder, and rain was more frequent, even sleeting sometimes, though, as they kept reminding each other, this was summer. There was extensive flooding, much of what must have been farmland turning to marsh, the walls of long-abandoned farmhouses dissolving into the wet. There were none of the bright flowers Avatak remembered from similar seasons in Northland, but flocks of birds settled almost experimentally on the new wetlands. It grew steadily colder. Soon they found themselves pushing through flurries of fresh snow, the horses wheezed and dropped their heads as the wet stuff flecked their fur, and in the mornings they would wake to frost.

‘We’re walking into winter,’ Himil said, amazed.

They came at last to Parisa, the greatest city in Frankish Gaira, sprawling across its river. Avatak remembered it well. It was still a bustling place, still alive, as you could tell from the pall of smoke hung over it. But now snow rested on its rooftops and slim minarets, and there were ice floes on the river. And if you looked only a little further north you could see only white: not a scrap of earth brown or life’s green anywhere. Avatak felt a strange thrill, of recognition, and of fear. How was it possible for such a great country to have changed so quickly?

Nelo slapped him on the back. ‘Ice! We’re in your hands now, Coldlander.’

They spent a few nights in Parisa. The city had lost most of its population, and was slowly consuming itself for firewood. Every day hunting parties went out into the country, on foot and on horseback, seeking the deer and oxen and aurochs that were colonising the soggy, deep-frozen plains. Avatak was a brief sensation when he showed Nelo and Himil and a few local hunters the best way to trap a bird. You threw a net in the air to catch it in flight, and took it in your bare hands, then bent its wings back gently and pressed its chest over its heart, and it would die quietly.

But he spent most of those days in Parisa preparing for the journey ahead. A journey over the ice.

On the seventh day out of Parisa they ran into a blizzard. The northerly wind was flat, hurling hard, heavy flakes into their faces. Avatak felt the ice build up on his beard, his eyebrows, his skin. He made Nelo and Himil watch each other’s faces, the noses and the cheeks, for the pale white spots that were the first signs of ice blight. Pyxeas stayed tucked up in the tent on the back of the carriage.

A blizzard in summer!

They tried to keep moving. They had dogs now, a team assembled at Avatak’s insistence, to draw them over the ice. At last he had dogs, and could show what he could do! But these were dogs of Parisa, dogs of the city and the forest, not the tough animals of Coldland. They were doing their best, but the wind polished the surface of the ice smooth, the dogs could get no traction, and unless he whipped them they would stop and huddle together for warmth, a squirming mass of fur.

There came a point where the dogs could do no more, and Avatak called a halt. It was not yet noon.

There was no way they could put up their shelters in the blizzard. The three of them, Avatak, Nelo and Himil, had to crowd into the little tent on the back of the carriage with Pyxeas, who had barely been awake for days, lying under a heap of wool and fur blankets. They soon got the fire started on its metal hearth. The tent, securely strapped to the back of the carriage, was stable enough, though the carriage itself, resting on its runners, creaked in the wind. The tent was too small for the four of them, though; Avatak could feel the wet mass of its fabric wall on his back as he tried to pull off his fur boots.

Something disturbed the dogs, and they howled.

Pyxeas stirred. ‘Avatak?’

‘I am here, scholar.’ Avatak took the chance to sit him up gently, and let him sip at hot nettle tea.

‘Umm. . I have been asleep.’

‘Yes. You aren’t well. We think you have had a fever.’

‘Ah. From those mother-forsaken marshes south of Parisa. I remember.’ He frowned, his bony fingers wrapped around his cup. ‘Can I hear dogs?’

‘Yes, scholar. You remember, I bought them in Parisa.’

Himil said, ‘And I said they were mangy curs that must have been weaned on liquid gold, they cost so much.’

‘We are on the ice,’ Pyxeas whispered.

‘For some days now. You have been sleeping.’

‘I slip in and out of the world, it seems. But tell me, the carriage: did the mechanism work well, as the wheels were replaced by runners?’

‘Perfectly,’ said Himil.

‘I would have liked to have seen that. So here we are on the ice, in a sled, with dogs! This is why I brought you, you know, Avatak. Brought you all those years ago from your home across the sea. Because I knew the ice was coming. I wanted a man beside me who could handle a team of dogs, on the ice, for I knew that one day I would need it. And to teach you, boy, to shape your mind, of course, don’t forget that. . Do you think we are in Northland yet?’

‘It is impossible to say. It is some days since I have been able to sight the stars, or the sun,’ said Avatak.

‘You have been keeping the journal, I trust.’

‘Of course. The weather holds us up.’

‘“The weather holds us up.” I could not have summed up the longwinter better myself.’ He laughed, and burst into a fit of coughing.

Nelo crawled around the little tent and held his great-uncle, cradling his head on his own lap, and the old man settled. ‘Ah, thank you, boy, that is warming, that is kind.’

Nelo blurted, ‘You never got your strength back after your trip to Cathay, and now this. I’m concerned.’